T-Mobile

T-Mobile is the multi-national carrier subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG that serves iPhone and iPad owners, among others, in Europe and the United States.

T-Mobile US, Inc. is the American operating entity of T-Mobile International AG. The fourth-largest carrier in America, T-Mobile U.S. — NYSE: TMUS — is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. The company has 49.1 million customers across the United States and has annual revenues about $24.42 billion.

T-Mobile's roots go back to the mid-1990s, when VoiceStream Wireless PCS was created by Western Wireless Corp. The business spun off in the late 1990s, and T-Mobile acquired it and renamed it in 2002. T-Mobile developed a niche for itself with the Danger Hiptop, rebranded as the T-Mobile Sidekick — an early smartphone with a slideout screen and a QWERTY keyboard that proved popular with wireless users interested in messaging, email and other online access. Microsoft acquired Danger in 2008 then in 2009 its servers suffered a massive outage that made many Sidekick users lose their data. T-Mobile lost customers in droves.

Rival wireless company AT&T attempted to acquire T-Mobile in 2011 in a $39 billion stock and cash offer. After facing heavy resistance from the United States government, AT&T withdrew its offer. T-Mobile then merged with MetroPCS Communications, then the nation's sixth largest wireless carrier. The combined company, T-Mobile US, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as TMUS.

Since then, T-Mobile has embarked on an aggressive strategy to modernize and expand its wireless network. The company operates a wireless network that communicates using Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), the same system used by AT&T and operated by most wireless carriers worldwide.

T-Mobile's network operates on different radio frequencies than AT&T's, which affects both the area of coverage for its cell phone towers and how well its signal penetrates buildings. As a result, T-Mobile customers often complain of network dropouts or lost signals, especially inside buildings. To correct this, in 2014 the company bought unused 700 MHz spectrum from rival Verizon and plans to begin to deploy it by the end of the year.

T-Mobile became the last of the "big four" U.S. carriers to get the iPhone, which it finally did in April, 2013. Since then T-Mobile has rolled out support for the iPad as well, even offering free limited bandwidth for iPads and other 4G LTE-capable tablets used by T-Mobile's postpaid customers.

T-Mobile's aggressive "Uncarrier" marketing efforts have branded the company as a rebel in the U.S. telecommunications market. T-Mobile's CEO John Legere carefully cultivates that image, using brash language on stage and occasionally staging publicity-enhancing antics like crashing AT&T's private party at CES 2014.

The bottom line, however, is that T-Mobile has not only grabbed headlines, but begun to significantly re-shape the way carriers do business in the U.S.

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Prior to their upcoming Q4 financial call, T-Mobile has released a batch of preliminary results summing up their 2014. They managed to add 8.3 million total net customers, which is the most they've done annually ever. 2.1 million of those were added in the last quarter. T-Mobile LTE is now...

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Wi-Fi calling is a new feature of iOS 8 that's available initially to T-Mobile customers in the United States and EE customers in the U.K. What's more, it's coming to other carriers in the coming months. It lets your iPhone make and receive calls using Wi-Fi instead of depending on your carrier's...

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T-Mobile CEO John Legere stated today that the wireless carrier has overtaken Sprint, in terms of the number of its customers, to become the third biggest wireless carrier in the US. Legere made those claims as part of T-Mobile's quarterly conference call to analysts following the release of its...

T-Mobile has a new Chief Operating Officer. As part of a corporate reshuffling, CEO John Legere announced that Mike Sievert will be the Un-carrier's first COO. Sievert has until now served as the company's Chief Marketing Officer, and in his new role will be responsible for a number of consumer-...

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Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced that the city has reached a deal with Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile to bring 4G LTE from all four carriers to the Chicago Transit Authority's subway system. The network, which will replace the decade-old system currently in Chicago's subways,...

It looks like T-Mobile will be showing multiple new ads during Super Bowl XLIX. In addition to their ad starring Kim Kardashian, T-Mobile will also air a spot featuring comedians Chelsea Handler and Sarah Silverman. While the full ad hasn't yet been posted online, the carrier did post a behind-...

Sprint's taking the fight straight to T-Mobile and is offering customers of the Un-carrier a guaranteed minimum trade-in credit of $200 for their current working T-Mobile smartphone. That's in addition to the current contract buy-out offer (though T-Mobile ditched traditional contracts nearly two...

T-Mobile will begin a new program starting on January 25 it calls Smartphone Equality. The effort will give customers of the wireless carrier their best deals on its smartphones and tablets, regardless of their credit score, if they have paid their bills for at least 12 straight months.
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Update: Clarified the post to indicate that speeds are throttled back to 128kbps (about 2G speeds) when you hit your data allotment, not 3G. Also added additional information on plan restrictions.
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